


Always Something

by taylor_tut



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Pepper Potts Feels, Post-Endgame, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-17 02:23:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16965924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/pseuds/taylor_tut
Summary: this is just a little way-too-flowery tag-piece to the trailer, in which Tony survives, the snapped are restored, and Pepper finds his message to her months later.





	Always Something

These days, Pepper's belly touched Tony's back as he sat in a lab chair, hunched over the folders and folders of research on how to de-Hulk Bruce, before the rest of her did. Peter looked up from doing his homework at the other lab bench and smiled. 

"Hi, Mrs. Potts," he greeted. She'd kept her name for a lot of reasons and refused to let herself acknowledge that there were things she didn't want to give to Tony if he was never going to be able to give her everything that he was, which, of course, he wasn't. He turned to her and smiled with tired eyes that took a minute to adjust back to 3D from the tireless, countless hours he spent at his workbench. 

"Hi, sweetie," he said, turning in his chair so that he could rest his head on her chest and his hand on his daughter. "Hi, baby," he whispered, just as he always did, so quietly that Pepper knew that he didn't think she could hear it. 

"It's nearly 7:00," she announced, mostly to Peter, who blanched. 

"Oh, shit; I've got to get home," he worried. "May's gonna be mad if I get home after curfew again." He picked up the Iron Man helmet, which Tony had given him to examine for ideas about renovations to the Spidey Suit. "Is it cool if I take this home?"

"I'm not sure that's—"

"Sure, honey," Pepper overlapped, giving Tony a stern look. "Tony's not going to be using it, anyway, are you?"

Tony rolled his eyes affectionately. "No, of course not. I'll be spending the rest of the evening giving my pregnant, sore wife a bath and a foot massage." Pepper pressed a kiss to his cheek, in response to which Peter grimaced. 

"It's like watching your parents kiss," he muttered to no one who cared. As he went to put the helmet into his bag, his finger slipped, turning the helmet on and projecting a new, hidden welcome screen which he'd never seen before. "Baby-Monitor Protocol Playback" headlined the hologram, and Peter frowned in confusion.

"You've got a baby-monitor protocol, too?" he asked confusedly. Anything that Tony recorded on his suit's dash-cam was usually through the reactor and almost never via the helmet, now, after many times of getting the helmet knocked away from him in a fight while the rest of the suit stayed in place. Tony stood quickly and lunged for the helmet in a rare moment of looking on the brink of losing his cool, which only made Peter more curious, and, of course, Peter was faster. He stepped aside and began poking around the screen, opening several folders until finally he arrived at one which contained content. A series of videos, spanning over the course of several days in April that year—while Peter and the others had been snapped away, while Tony had been in space. 

"Mr. Stark, what is this?" he asked, his eyes wide and concerned that it might actually be what he was beginning to think it was.

"Kid, that's private," Tony warned, an icy edge to his voice, "intensely private. I should've deleted it earlier. I thought I locked it up."

Peter shrugged, unwilling to be distracted. "I know how to get through most of your firewalls by this point."

"Tony," Pepper coaxed, one hand on her belly, "what is it? Why don't you want us to see it?"

Another secret. Always secrets, always one reason or another that he couldn't tell her everything about everything. She tried to be okay with it, but it wasn't just that he didn't tell HER, it was that he didn't tell ANYONE. She'd rather have there be 1,000 things about him that he told a therapist over her instead of 1,000 things he yelled about in his sleep knowing that not a single soul on Earth would understand. 

Before Tony could even make a move, Peter had pressed the final audio document and it began playing, a little hologram of a starved-looking, half-dead Tony appearing on the floor of the lab.

"Hey, Ms. Potts," Tony's voice greeted, tinny and sad, but still full of the same love with which he always said her name. "If you find this recording... don't feel bad about this."

"Tony, what is this?" Pepper asked again, her hand frozen mid-hover between the baby and Tony's shoulder. "Feel bad about what?"

"Peter, turn it off."

"Part of the journey is the end," the recording continued. Peter's hearing went high-pitched in that way it now did when he started to get flutters of anxiety in his chest. "Just for the record, being adrift in space with no chance of rescue is more fun than it sounds."

Pepper's hand covered her mouth as she continued to listen to how long he'd been without food and water and she felt her own chest constrict when the promise of air was taken from him. 

"When I drift off," the hologram promised, tapping the screen like it was anything other than an empty helmet in the middle of goddamn outer space, "I will dream about you. It's always you."

“Turn it off,” Pepper pleaded in a tight voice, afraid that if she was anything less than fully put together then she’d fall apart. “That’s enough of that.”

Peter scrambled to mute the program, but Tony had already ended the transmission. Gingerly, like it might burn him, he set the helmet back on top of the table and backed away from it.

“I should get going,” he said awkwardly, but Pepper and Tony were lost to the world, in their own little universe that didn’t seem to care whether or not there were spectators, so he hovered at the elevator for a moment longer than maybe he should have.

“I’m always your last thought before you think you’re going to die,” she told him in a voice barely more powerful than a whisper. “Why am I always the last thought? Are we ever going to stop doing this thing where you almost die and then think it’s romantic to tell me that you’re sorry for leaving?”

“Pepper,” he replied, reaching for her hands and not pressing further when she jerked them away. “You’re the only thing in this world I’ve ever had to lose. I don’t go out there because I don’t care about you—I do it because I love you. I need you to be safe.”

“It’s not just about me, Tony.” She took his hands and pressed them to her stomach so that he could feel their baby kick, which made him have to bite down on a smile, knowing it was inappropriate but unable to stop it from happening.

“No, it’s not,” he said sternly, as if she’d strengthened his point instead of argued it. “It’s over now, Pep. It’s going to be okay from here on out.” With no choices left that wouldn’t break her heart, she nodded, pretending to believe that “it” could EVER be over for Tony and repeated his helmet-recorded message over and over in her head—”it’s always you.” All she had to prove her love to him were a million meaningful nothings, but he kept being called out on all these enormous, dangerous somethings that made her feel so insignificant that he’d risk his life for her without taking the risk of living, that she could somehow be everything to him and yet still not be enough. He kissed her hands and it felt like a start.


End file.
